Contactors for electrically connecting to circuit components of electronic devices are known in a variety of forms. One class of contactor is designed to enable convenient connection to a circuit component without requiring an additional process such as soldering. Such a contactor is typically used when a circuit component needs to be changed occasionally such as, for example, when a battery is to be replaced because its stored energy is low or depleted.
Conventionally, a contactor of the above type has a conductive contact to electrically contact an electrode of a circuit component. A simple form of a mountable contactor may be a rivet head but this is not able to maintain a reliable contact in all circumstances. An improvement over such rigid contactors employs a resilient contact such as a leaf spring to accommodate variations in the size or the position of a circuit component and also to maintain constant electrical contact to that circuit component under conditions such as a jolt that might break the contact.
Battery connectors provide one example of contactors in which contacts are typically resiliently formed or biassed. An example of a biassed type contactor is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,897,043 in which a contact end of a contact pin is urged by a spring in a forward direction relative to a metallic tube.
Contactors of the above-described biassed kind usually comprise a number of elements assembled together with some means by which they are mounted.
Leaf spring contactors suffer from fatigue in the resilient contact and electrical contact can be lost after a degree of fatigue.
A separately biassed contact, usually a contact pin acted on by a coil spring, is less prone to fatigue so long as a substantial coil spring is used. Overall, the dimensions of the biassed contact pin type of electrical connector are considerable and the techniques by which they are fixed in place are not always convenient.